


In Trade

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Male-Female Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 07:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3720373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Beckett. We are not going Dutch." He twists away from her, holding the trays high. Wincing when hot chocolate leaps out of one cup and dots his cheek.<br/>"Not, Dutch, you jackass. I invited you. I'm buying you dinner."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This will be a three-shot. Two short chapters and a slightly longer one. It begins at the end of "Poof! You're Dead" (3 x 12) and goes AU in the middle of "Nikki Heat" (3 x 11). It also is based on the original shooting order of those episodes, rather than the order in which they aired. (ABC opted to air "Nikki Heat" first, but here, the events of "Poof! You're Dead" come first.)

 

 

It's a stupid game. She starts it. She kind of starts it, except _he_ starts it, really. Like most things, it's really on him.

He does an end run around her at the food truck, barging in front of her to take their trays. He slides money over the sill—too much money by far. He hustles her away and mumbles, _Keep it,_ to the guy waving an inordinate amount of change after them.

They fight under the streetlight. Not _fight_ exactly. Its too awkward for that.

_"_ Beckett. We are not going Dutch." He twists away from her, holding the trays high. Wincing when hot chocolate leaps out of one cup and dots his cheek.

_"_ Not, Dutch, you jackass. _I_ invited _you._ I'm buying you dinner."

She shoves a couple of twenties in his coat pocket. She takes advantage of his full hands, hiding from the look on his face. Hiding from the fire in her cheeks that shouldn't be there. It's just street food, and they're friends, and so what if he just broke up with his ex-wife again? So what? It's just dinner, but she's blushing and he's breathless and it's _awkward._

"Never happen," he says unsteadily. He's going for swagger, but he overshoots. He doesn't quite have his breath back.

She smirks up at him as she drops to the end of a nearby bench. "Just did, Castle."

But the cash winds up in _her_ pocket by the end of the night. Hours later. _Hours_ and hours later, because they sit in the cold long after the heat's bled from their cocoa. Long after the truck has rolled away and the street is as empty as any street ever gets in New York.

She knows the exact moment it happens. He fancies himself quite the pick pocket, but he's hopeless. He fumbles the silk flowers. It's a sad attempt at a distraction, and even if she _couldn't_ feel him yanking at her waist, he's all tells.

In the streetlight, in the cold, with neither of them quite wanting to say goodnight, he's all tells.

* * *

 

"Beckett. How . . ."

She turns from the murder board to face him. Leisurely about it, because she knows she's gotten him good.

"That is _nasty,_ Beckett."

He sounds testy. And legitimately grossed out. He did just find two twenties, folded thin, mysteriously lurking at the bottom of his bag of chips, after all. But he's smiling, too. They're both smiling as he smooths a finger over the dog eared corner of one bill and the smeared ink crossing the center of the other that might have been a phone number sometime in the distant past.

"How did you even . . . ?" He shakes his head and pockets the cash. He turns the bag in his hands, trying to solve the mystery. He flips it back to front and holds the corners to rotate it ninety degrees at a time.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She snatches it from him and balls the foil packet in one fist. She pivots and lets it fly, raising both hands overhead before it's even halfway through its graceful arc. "Three points."

He watches as it falls through the round opening of the trash can. Dead center, of course. He turns to her, sputtering, but she's already back to the board. He follows, deliberately knocking into her side as he leans heavily back against her desk.

"Not over, Beckett," he mutters. " _So_ not over."

"Whatever, Castle."

* * *

 

It's not over. The twenties show up stuck to the bottom of her mug so carefully that she doesn't notice until she's rinsing it out and tips it over to set in the dish drainer. She scowls down at them.

Her head snaps up and he's there, grinning and giving her a tiny finger wave from the other side of the glass. _Not_ over, he mouths.

She sticks her tongue out at him. Laughs when LT rounds the corner and startles him. _Busted,_ she mouths, frowning at his sudden grin.

"He take your lunch money again?" Esposito's voice makes her jump as he comes up behind her.

"Shut up."

"You know that means he likes you, right?" Espo gestures through the half-open blinds.

She turns swiftly back to glare, but Castle's already gone. _Sewing up pockets or something,_ she thinks, trying to keep lips from curling up. She runs a fingernail under the bills, prying them up and letting the slender fold slip between her fingers and into the slash pocket of her pants. They're warm to the touch. She tells herself it's just the coffee.

"Just . . . shut up."

* * *

 

They go back and forth, one upping each other. He finds the twenties wedged into the tight felt of the white board eraser when he goes to connect the dots on some wild theory of his. She almost throws them out by accident when he tapes them to the underside of her yogurt lid.

"Castle!" she scolds.

"What?" He catches the lid as she throws it at his midsection. "Foil," he points out. "Completely sanitary. Which is more than I can say for _some_ people's dirty tricks."

"Dirty tricks," she mutters.

He walks around with a paperclip on his shirt collar for half a day. It's Ryan who points it out and Castle's blushing as he stammers some wholly unconvincing story that has nothing to do with her or them or this stupid little game they're playing.

_Stupid,_ she thinks to herself. _Harmless._ She adds silently when Castle's eyes find hers and it seems that way. It seems stupid and harmless right up to the point that she pulls her phone from the back pocket of her tightest pair of jeans and the folded pair twenties tumbles out.

She stares as they catch wind and waft slowly to the sidewalk. "Did you — Castle, did you touch my _butt_?"

"Totally." He gives an enthusiastic thumbs up to the handful of pedestrians who slow their rush enough to give the two of them a sidelong glance. He leans in to speak in her ear. " _Little_ hurt that you didn't notice, Beckett."

She's speechless. More flustered and less furious than she should be. A lot more . . . disappointed that she missed it. A _lot_ more disappointed, given that she's the one who's taken. She strides off, crushing the bills in her fist.

"Next time," he calls out, trotting to catch up with her. "Next time you'll _definitely_ notice."

* * *

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Natalie Rhodes ruins everything. Kate's not quite sure how or why, but she steps out of the limo into that alley, and everything's ruined just like that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Second chapter of this three shot. It begins at the end of "Poof! You're Dead" (3 x 12) and goes AU in the middle of "Nikki Heat" (3 x 11). It also is based on the original shooting order of those episodes, rather than the order in which they aired (ABC opted to air "Nikki Heat" first, but here, the events of "Poof! You're Dead" come first.

 

Natalie Rhodes ruins everything. Kate's not quite sure how or why, but she steps out of the limo into that alley, and everything's ruined just like that.

It throws her for a loop, how hostile he is about the whole thing. Way out of proportion to the brush off Natalie gives him. He's humorless about it, bordering on rude to the woman. It's really not like him, and it's more than just Natalie.

He's hostile to _her_ —to Kate—and it makes her blink. The sudden evaporation of ease between them. The flirty vibe they've batted back and forth, along with the limp pair of twenties. It's just gone, and it makes her blink when he scolds her for not asking him first about the ride along. When he mocks her for liking the idea of Natalie Rhodes playing Nikki Heat on the big screen. When he says Nikki is classy and complicated, and it doesn't sound like he's paying _her_ a compliment. It sounds like he's talking about someone else entirely.

She throws her coat at him. She calls out for Natalie, even though she's ruined everything. She leaves him standing there, shut out of the interview.

She's sorry for it later. More than sorry for leaving him standing there. She turns out her coat pockets, when he's not looking. He's off sulking somewhere. Fuming, and she goes through them one by one. She feels carefully along the finger of each glove, because it's his turn. The twenties aren't there, though.

She tells herself it's too run of the mill at this point. He has them. She knows that. She'd sweet-talked the doorman into opening the mailbox in his lobby, and there's no way he wouldn't have torn into the absolutely plain white envelope the minute he laid hands on it. He has them, and he knows it's his turn. He just wouldn't go for something so mundane after she'd scored that kind of coup.

She tells herself that's it, but they're nowhere all morning and afternoon. They're not under her stapler or taped to the earpiece of her desk phone. They're not in her candy dish or curved in the vending machine slot when she stoops for her change.

They're nowhere and the game is suddenly done. Everything's ruined and she doesn't know why. She doesn't even know how to ask.

* * *

 

 

By morning the whole world swings the other way. Kate hates it. She hates this new shift of ground beneath her feet. Everything about it.

She's on page six. Not _her,_ really. Not her at all, but them. Castle and Natalie Rhodes, because the basic famous person disguise doesn't work in New York, apparently. Not that she was wearing it by the time they left Stacey Collins' office.

Kate stares at the picture, remembering the moment too well. Feeling that sick-making pivot as Natalie shook out her hair and Castle leaned in to pay her a compliment—hardly grudging at all—for her idea about the stupid, overpriced bag and its maker registry. The camera captures the sideways smile she gives him.

It's a good picture of him. Of the two of them. Kate's not really in it. She's just background. One cheek and a bony hint of chin, blurred and half in shadow.

She feels like that all day. Blurred and half in shadow when he tells her it's just coffee. When he doesn't even offer to make her a replacement, going off instead about Natalie's _dedication._ When his eyes follow the sway of her hips through the bullpen, and he smiles across the room at her, like maybe she's his kind of Nikki after all.

And why wouldn't she be, with her six-figure set of luggage and a month to blow in a damned crawl space? That might be what Kate hates most. The kind of sense the two of them make. The way they trade names back and forth. How they laugh and exclaim over people and places they both know. These lives they have that fit together and make for great quarter inches of column.

_The playboy writer, only just back on the market after a re-break-up with his second ex-wife . . ._

That fit—and the way there's no room at all for Kate—might be what she hates most right up to the moment when Natalie emerges from the ladies room in her Nikki drag. Hate isn't strong enough for what she feels then. It's not nearly complicated enough.

Castle can hardly speak for staring. It's worse when he does.

_Just like I dreamed it . . ._

Kate's heart sinks like a stone, the word and the way he looks from her to Natalie and back again, snapping things into painful focus.

_Dreamed._

That's what this is to him. The whole Nikki Heat thing is a fantasy that Natalie Rhodes just can't wait to fulfill. It's what she does, and there's no reason at all that Natalie can't have exactly what he wants. That _he_ can't.

It's agony. She feels like the worst kind of fool, and she can't watch this anymore. She just _can't._

She hears herself saying something. Telling Natalie to go home for the night. Castle rushes after her, and Kate wonders if that backfired. If she's actually stupid enough that some part of her hoped he wouldn't follow. Some part of her that hoped he'd stay.

He doesn't, though. He follows at Natalie's heels and Kate's heart sinks like a stone as he takes the bulky box from her with the bumbling chivalry that's supposed to be only for her.

Her heart sinks like a stone as she watches them by the elevator, close enough for their shoulders brush.

Her heart sinks like a stone as Natalie pins him to the wall and his arms come around her.

It sinks like a stone, and it's all she can do to hold on to the edge of her desk to keep herself from running after him. From pushing her way between them and holding her hand out, demanding her stupid pair of twenties back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, thank you for reading, and especially for the feedback. I'll put up the third and final chapter tonight.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She stands in the middle of the apartment with no idea at all what comes next. The rest of the night. Tomorrow. The morning after. The thought of facing them—facing him—grabs her insides and twists. The air feels too close. She needs out. She needs to go out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Third and final chapter, with special thanks to Cora Clavia for helping me fix the ending. Unfixed things about the ending remain my responsibility. This 3-shot begins at the end of "Poof! You're Dead" (3 x 12) and goes AU in the middle of "Nikki Heat" (3 x 11). It also is based on the original shooting order of those episodes, rather than the order in which they aired (ABC opted to air "Nikki Heat" first, but here, the events of "Poof! You're Dead" come first.

 

 

She goes home.

It's stupid. It's empty. Everything's empty. The fridge and the cabinets. The bubble bath on the edge of the tub when she thinks about that for half a second. All empty.

She picks up her phone and puts it down again. There's no one she wants to call and she's half afraid no one would pick up anyway. More than half afraid what she'd say if anyone did. If she might pour her heart out to Lanie in the unlikely even that her friend is home alone on a Friday night.

If she'd ask Josh to come home and really _do_ this with her. Not halfway, but really _try_ to be in this together. She's half afraid she'd beg with no idea whether or not that's what she really wants. She's half afraid of what might happen if he actually answered in the middle of the night. Or whatever time it is, wherever he might be right now.

She's half afraid she'll call Castle. That she'll scream at him or invent some break in the case to bring him running running from Natalie's suite. She's half afraid there's nothing at all she could say to bring him running.

She stands in the middle of the apartment with no idea at all what comes next. The rest of the night. Tomorrow. _The morning after._ The thought of facing them—facing him—grabs her insides and twists. The air feels too close. She needs out. She needs to go out. She grabs her keys. A jacket that's not nearly heavy enough, but she can't bear the one with its empty pockets, and she needs to _go._

She tears the door open and he's there, his fist just raised to knock.

"Beckett." He looks surprised, and not just because the door swung open before his knuckles ever made contact. He's jittery and out of breath, like it's impulse along that carried him to her door, and whatever plan he had ends here.

"Going out, Castle." She sounds positive about that. Firm, and it's strange, because she's nothing like that on the inside. On the inside she's relieved and angry and lonely and not positive about anything.

He looks . . . disheveled. His hair stands up in back and he's red around the chin and mouth, like he's been scrubbing at his own skin. One corner of his collar pokes out over the lapel of his sport coat. There's lipstick on it. Her shade, but not quite.

She tries to push past him. She tries to go. It seems like the only thing she _can_ do, but he steps in front of her.

"Can you . . . not?" He adds the question mark like he's pulling a punch. Like he's realized not quite too late that it sounds like an order. "Kate." He makes his voice quiet on her name and she hates him for it. "Can I come in?"

She wants to hate him for it, but she holds the door wide.

* * *

 

She sinks in the middle of the couch, not at all inviting. He shoots her a look. A little stubborn. A little annoyed as he perches on the end of the chaise, not quite at right angles to her.

They're silent a long time. He's studying his hands. Chafing his fingers together like he wishes he had pen and paper. It's an odd thought. The images catches her up. The contrast to what she's seen of him—digital storyboards and what seems like a new smart phone every week. It sweeps her along far enough in her own head that she's startled when he speaks.

"Something . . . happened."

He looks up sharply, startled in his own right and she wonders if she made some sound. If the anguish she feels slammed into the air all on its own.

"No. Wait." He looks down at his hands again. "Let me start over. I'm sorry."

"Castle, I don't . . ." She trails off. She looks down, surprised almost to find herself still sitting. Surprised she's not Wile E. Coyote off a cliff. _I don't_. . she has no idea how she might have finished that sentence, but he's talking already.

"No, Beckett, please let me . . ." He half glances at her, flustered and a little put out. At her. At himself. At the way they're out of sync. She really doesn't know. "I've been . . . difficult since Natalie showed up, and I'm sorry."

"Difficult." She means it to be sarcastic. Biting, but it's hollow. "Well. That's over, right?"

"Over," he repeats. He leans toward her, then away again. Sharply, like away from her is the last place he wants to be. He sets his jaw, though. He goes on. "You — but you don't know any of this." He shifts uncomfortably. "The studio was talking about Natalie for Nikki Heat way back . . . I never wanted her."

His eyes find hers and there's far too much between them suddenly. He's looking at her like he wants her to understand, but there's lipstick on his collar, and it's not quite her shade. She looks away. His shoulders sink with a sigh deep enough to travel over the expanse of couch between them.

"Black Pawn doesn't get a say in casting. _I_ don't get a say." He's quiet long enough for the words to fade away. Long enough to draw her eyes back his way. She sees the tips of his ears burning red and wonders. "Gina is . . . not happy with me," he says miserably.

_"Gina!_ " Surprise pulls the name loudly from her. Far too loudly, but she's been bracing for some kind of terrible play-by-play of his romp with her doppelgänger. She might break something if his ex comes into it somehow. "She . . . made this happen?"

"She stopped making it _not_ happen." He gives her a weak, apologetic kind of smile, like he realizes this is making no kind of sense at all. "We don't get a say, but Gina handles a lot of titles that a lot of studios would kill to get their hands on, and until recently . . ."

". . . until recently, she was . . . motivated to use that leverage to keep Natalie out of the role."

He nods. "I think so, anyway. And when Natalie showed up . . ."

"You thought it was Gina retaliating."

He nods again. "And when I found out that _you'd_ given the ok to the ride-along, it threw me. I felt . . . it doesn't matter how I felt. I was shitty, and I'm sorry."

It's her turn to nod. It's stupid. It's stupid of both of them to sit here like this, nodding endlessly, but Gina explains how he was yesterday and not much else.

"Something happened." She's appalled to hear herself say it. The _last_ thing in the world she wants is the story. But he came here to this empty place, disheveled and jittery, with no plan at all, and that matters somehow. She curls her hands in tight fists and shoves them under her thighs to keep from clapping her hands over her mouth. "You said something happened."

"Happened. Right." He sounds breathless again. His fingers are busy, clenching and unclenching over his knees. "Didn't . . ." His voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again. " _Didn't_ happen, actually. Natalie wanted . . . she thought . . . since I . . . since Rook is based on me . . . Natalie wanted . . ."

He trails off. Her heart is pounding and she could kill him for it. She could kill him for not just getting this over with.

"Castle," she pushes up from the couch. She paces with sudden, furious energy. She's at the door. She's already twisting the handle. "I don't need to hear this."

Her blood is pounding in her ears. She doesn't hear him follow. His fingers close around her wrist and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

"But I need to say it." His voice is quiet. Urgent. "Nothing happened."

He loosens his hold. She lets her hand fall from the door. A compromise.

_Nothing happened._

It's like her heart starts beating again. Loud in the heavy, wordless air between them.

"Too meta?" It's her voice. It strange sounding, filtered through a pained, lopsided thing that that's almost a smile.

He huffs out a breath in answer. Almost a laugh. "Something like that."

She leans her shoulder against the door. Her head. She's weak with relief and two days' worth of tension bleeding out of her. Weak with familiar butterfly wings beating madly again. She doesn't know what comes next.

She looks up to find him studying her. Her skin goes hot all over. She's blushing seven different ways. From the simple fact of him looking at her. From his nearness and the new kind of foolish she feels all of a sudden, because this is nothing like the way he looked at Natalie.

"I don't want Nikki Heat," he says, reading her mind like always.

He's confident with it, and that . . . annoys her. It infuriates her, she's standing here, wondering how many ways there _are_ to blush. She bristles. Her spine stiffens and her arms cross, closing off the space between them, but he's oblivious. Or determined, maybe, to push past this for once. The painful, awkward point things have gotten to between them.

He studies her, laying careful emphasis on each word. "I don't want someone playing at being her."

"Don't you?" She says and it falls heavier on the question mark than she wants it to. It's nothing like the challenge she meant it to be.

"I don't, Kate. I haven't for a long time."

Those words come quietly with space in between, and he must have meant to leave it. Anger flares in her, filling it. Consuming. _A long time_. He's got nerve to say it when there's been Gina all this time and Nikki Heat 1.0, whatever her name was. She looks at him sharply, and there's his anger, too, flaring just as hot. Because there was Demming, because . . . .

"A long time," he repeats, gentler still, and she wonders if she imagined the swagger a minute ago. She wonders if it's him or her or both of them hiding behind that kind of thing. She wonders if that's behind the careful look he's giving her. "But . . . you're with Josh?"

His eyes drift away from hers. He scans the room, and it feels a hundred times more echoing and empty than when she came home. There's barely any trace of her, let alone anyone else. He meets her gaze again and her chin might move an inch in either direction. It might not. She can hardly tell.

"I don't know what that means to you. If the two of you are . . . casual." That's hard for him. His ribs jerk up and down in a painful breath. "But I'm not. I . . . I . . ." He stutters. His fingers fly to his collar. To the lipstick stain that's not quite her shade. The tips of his ears burn again. "Not about you." His breath catches again, but it's a wide smile this time, a little on the crazy side. "So. I should go?"

"Go," she echoes. "Probably." She clears her throat. "Probably you should go."

She doesn't sound convinced. He doesn't look it, but she's pulling the door open and he's halfway through. Halfway when he stops and pulls her to him. His arms come around her. Hers make their way around him. It's fierce at first. Clinging and solid, comfort and apology and forgiveness.

And then it's a little dangerous, this ever-present electricity, back and forth between them. He slides his palms over her hips and his lips hover at her ear, teetering on the edge of things they both know when they're quiet enough to listen. Kind enough, to themselves and to one another.

_I want to kiss you._

_I think you want to kiss me._

_I think we both . . ._

_. . . for a long time_

But he doesn't say any of that.

"Not over, Beckett."

That's what he says, low in his ear, as his fingers fan wide, just barely brushing down the small of her back. She feels the tug at her back pocket. She laughs. Her forehead tips against his shoulder, and he laughs with her as he tucks the folded twenties away.

His palms come lightly to rest, just for a moment. She notices. As promised, she _notices_. And then he's gone.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, thank you for reading, and especially for the feedback. I am sorry they did not run off to Beckett's bedroom to make bebes.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading. Second and third chapters will be up shortly.


End file.
